Letters to an Android

by Wendy Rathbone

  And now Cobalt’s poems.

  He opened his keypad.

  Dear Cobalt:

  A person’s dreams can come true and still mistakes lurk waiting to leap upon the mind and all its choices. The decisions one makes when feeling strong, relentless, fearless can also be rash. Strength does not mean wisdom, right?

  Perhaps I am making no sense right now.

  Maybe I won’t even send this. But I like writing my thoughts to you. The form of our waves allows me an introspection I might not ordinarily get in my day to day living. Like a form of meditation.

  Allow my rambles for now.

  Your haiku touch me. In a simple, no-nonsense way, they are brilliant flashes of insight that prove you have a heart. That sounds cliché just to write it. But I have so many thoughts and, tonight, not enough words to contain them. Just know that something of what I’m feeling right now is captured in those little three-liners.

  I’m nervous. My test is in two days.

  I have studied and studied.

  Lark says I’m too young.

  I don’t know.

  Lark and Tiri were fighting again, breaking in on me in the middle of the night at the ship’s lowest level viewport where I was studying, reviewing, in the quiet and the starshadows. Despite my confessed (only to you) space-fear, sometimes I love the strange, desolate peacefulness of the blackness of space through the port windows. The stars are there, but little comfort. They are so distant. But space itself is like a blanket. Cold, though. Yeah. Like your poem that talks of the void, and then the human embrace. You never mention the words ‘cold’ or ‘warm’ but I feel them there between the lines.

  I’m both cold and warm right now.

  The tests. Lark, Tiri. All of it.

  I miss you. I really wish you were here and you could meet my friends.

  We go to Nod in two days time. My tests are scheduled for the morning we arrive at Nod. I’ll finish in time for shore leave. When I return I should have the results. The captain gives the results to each individual personally.

  If you pass, and all your other records of work performance are in order, he promotes you.

  Lark says I am smarter than my years. Right now, I don’t think so.

  If in the next two days you find yourself looking out past those poisoned skies of both our beginnings in friendship and adventure, say a wish for me. I will say one in return.

  Your friend,

  Liyan

  *

  Dear Liyan:

  You will pass your tests and your captain’s judgment. I have no worries. But I understand your worries. You are the one facing your dreams head-on, knowing they could take on different tones and hues than your very personal visions.

  Worrisome, indeed.

  I find no responsive haiku from you this time but I understand. You are not in a poetic mood. I am trying myself to find the poetry in the oddest things and often cannot.

  Is there tension between you and Tiri? Or you and Lark?

  I do wish I could meet them. They seem handsome and brilliant all at once.

  If there are brilliant people who pass through this hotel, I meet them only briefly. I do not work with any that fulfill that adjective in any capacity. If they show signs of intelligence, they are usually also dull.

  Pel is not stupid but he is a very narrow man with little imagination that I can discern.

  My first owner, Pela, showed no signs of deeper thought past the color of her outfits or the scents of her bath. She did not even sleep with her husband, so one wonders about the heart in her case as well.

  Everyone must have one, of course, but how it manifests or atrophies is attributed to so many lifelong factors. Insecurities, loves, griefs, illness, broken emotions or healthy emotions…and how can I say it? Sometimes, it is in the difference between the two?

  Allow me to ramble, too. I have had a difficult night and very little sleep.

  But hearing from you quite suddenly at my sleep hour made everything better.

  How can that be? You are one person so far away writing me waves made up of little particles that form words that then make a picture in my mind. How is that possible?

  The universe is a strange place. Communication may make it less isolating but perhaps even more strange!

  I am lying in bed as you were in your last wave, on soft satins the shades of flame, trying to relax, to sleep.

  It comes easier now, knowing you are out there following your longings and still thinking of me.

  remembering

  the ice chiming in your waterglass

  before you left

  Your friend,

  Cobalt

  *

  Dear Cobalt:

  I took the tests. Two hours each. I feel good now.

  Off to shore leave.

  I plan to see the thunderlights of Nod. They are like true-Earth’s aurora borealis. Only these lights are accompanied by a drumming (thus they are called ‘thunderlights’) that can cause cognitive dissonance, but not anything more severe than a few glasses of wine might do to the brain.

  What things can you not find poetry in? I want to know. Even the ugliness. Because friends share all of it, right?

  I have told you about Tiri and Lark and the discomfort I sometimes feel there.

  You asked: Is there tension between me and Tiri? Or me and Lark?

  The questions confuse me. I thought I was writing of the tension between Tiri and Lark. I do not participate in their arguments.

  Lark and I are better friends, yes, but Tiri and I enjoy games together, and we are a great team in nav. I forgave her long ago for putting ‘Enchantment’ in our drinks at that nightclub in that floating city of Vaera. She never meant anything sinister by it. It was a common form of recreational drug when she worked as a soldier.

  We also work out together. I do some weight-training to gather muscle mass for landfalls. In any closed environment we grow soft if we don’t move. Tiri is an excellent work out partner. She knows everything about everything when it comes to exercise.

  As I said in one of my last waves, Lark joins in, too, but he’s lazier. Maybe twice a week he comes. Lark’s laziness doesn’t show, however. He is trim and strong. Tiri and I meet every day with one day off for rest every six.

  Once Tiri said, “How about working out naked today?” I said, “No.”

  I think something must be seriously wrong with me!

  Another time she called me a prude. I don’t recall the exact context. Lark told her to apologize. She said, “Are you telling me as my boss?” He said, “No.” She said, “No chance, then.”

  I just stood there trying not to laugh because I wasn’t really offended, and especially not by Tiri. I’ve grown used to her bluntness. She says what’s on her mind, that’s all.

  I don’t see any tension between me and her, not really, or me and Lark. There is always that syndrome of being the third wheel when one hangs out with a couple. We enjoy meals together, and games.

  They also always invite me when we get time to go planetside at our stopovers. They invite Sekina, too. And sometimes others. If it’s just the three of us, we’re fine. But yes I am the odd man out, so to speak.

  We leave for Nod tonight. We get a full 24 hours there.

  By the time I get back I will learn the results of my tests.

  I will wave you as soon as I can.

  Your friend,

  Liyan

  *

  Dear Liyan:

  I do look forward to your next wave.

  I am confident you did well on your tests. You studied hard. You are smart. There is no reason to think otherwise.

  Nod is a beautiful planet, described on the waves as “a fairytale getaway” “a lush and magical realm” “offering exotic tours of alien castles direct from fabled fantasy.”

  It is a world still being excavated, the human-like inhabitants long gone. Some say they lived a million ye
ars on that world, then vanished mysteriously ten thousand years ago. But no one scientist agrees. Evidence suggests they might have migrated elsewhere for unknown reasons. There is no evidence of war, thus the sites for sight-seeing are intact except from the erosions of climate and time.

  I hope you find your stay there inspiring.

  I assume when you say “we leave for Nod tonight” you are going with Lark and Tiri.

  I enjoy hearing about them and am glad they are your friends. I never meant to actually suggest you had tension with either one; I only wondered. You explained the “third wheel” syndrome quite well and now I understand the relationship better.

  Please accept my apologies for when I misunderstand certain social interactions. I meet a lot of people in my jobs, but I am limited in social experience because of my status. People who understand what I am do not respond to me in normal human ways…at least that appears to be the case in a very high percentage of interactions. So I am at a disadvantage when it comes down to discussion of such things as even normal friendships.

  I have a planted childhood memory of a friendship with a neighbor boy. It is unreal. It is a poor context, assuming my brain can process that I grew up in a house in a neighborhood of families with other children and went to an all-child, human school.

  I remember my more unpleasant adult training at the ‘farm’ more vividly, where it is emphasized over and over that we are NOT really human. It makes me wonder why they even bother giving us those earlier “human” memories. I understand it is to give us unique personalities, but might we not develop those on our own?

  The boy I remember as a child was shallow and un-unique, someone to ride bikes with or play against in real or virtual hockey. I have never ridden a bicycle in my life. I have never actually played real hockey, on a field or on ice. However, because the memory is there, I suppose I could do those things if ever asked.

  I have a very vivid memory of sitting in a field of yellow flowers watching bees feed from their centers. I can hear them buzzing and fizzing the air. I can smell the honeyed pollen.

  Memory is a slippery thing. Humans assure me it is for them as well. There are many adult humans who say they don’t even remember much of their childhoods.

  Perhaps I am on a more even level with humans than I’ve been taught to believe. It is a comforting thought. And also disconcerting.

  Have a good time on Nod.

  Your friend,

  Cobalt

  *

  Dear Cobalt:

  I’m writing this as I still wait to hear the results of my test. No! They are not yet in!

  But I am back from Nod with fantastic images wavering in my mind.

  Worlds are huge and vast. Each planet has beauty and vistas that might take dozens or hundreds of tours to fully appreciate. We get, at most, 24 hours to choose one place to see before returning to the ship.

  You are correct in everything you said about Nod. It is a fairytale world. The inhabitants left it intact but empty. It is a tourist mecca of sorts.

  Every person in our group had already agreed we wanted to see the thunderlights. They are best viewed from two locations in the northern hemisphere of the planet.

  We chose to go to the territory called The Fairylands of Nod, a thousand square mile stretch of land surrounding the planet’s largest city, Nyght.

  Taking in all the local geography, you could pretty much choose any point in that thousand square miles and find something fabulous to fixate on.

  We decided to take a shuttle to the “Chesslands.”

  As we approached from crystal, azure skies, you could see in a vast wilderness clearing strange lines of broken columns for twenty miles or more of desert marking the Chesslands. We landed at the edge of that desert where the line of the forest begins. Looking at it from the ground, it seems to go on forever, broken columns like a sea of white bishops from a giant chess set.

  I said the clearing was a desert. I only say that because nothing grows there. Nothing but the strange sculptured structures mirroring each other on and on. But the clearing, as I already wrote, is actually surrounded by a vast wilderness, “a forest of marvel and wonder,” so say the guidebooks.

  A storybook train runs through forest tunnels and hills. There were many such trains that ran east, south, west, north. You could choose your direction. Again, it didn’t matter. Every mysterious grove in any direction bragged of rich views. After walking through the bishop-shaped columns of the Chesslands for a ways, we grew bored and took the northern train. It wound slowly through draping greenery, making frequent stops at tiny touristy villages that looked like pictures from a children’s fantasy book. We decided to stop at one called Beauty’s View because it had a floating hotel that advertised the best view of the thunderlights.

  The Beauty’s View hotel had every amenity. Its twenty stories floated above the trees. You could take elevators up from ground level that were really little square, glass-box air cars that rose and fell at the push of a button.

  Everything became only more amazing after that. Tiri, Lark and I shared a suite. We saw a distant lake from our wide windows, with little rivers and eddies that snaked into the trees. Boats were traveling slowly up and down those flashing, blue waterways.

  We decided to take a boat trip for a couple hours. Every turn the boat made on the slow rivers revealed ever more beautiful alcoves, secret grottoes, lagoons, caves draped with green lace, hidden gardens.

  We came into a larger pond, through curtains of brass and emerald leaves and everyone held their breaths. This little lake, this hideaway paradise assaulted our eyes with a brilliance of color. Where to look first!

  The still lake reflected everything, doubling our vision upward and downward. Flowers cascaded from tall bushes, everything against the backdrop of darker trees. Before us was a lavender beach. On the far edge of the little lake the forest gave way to soft orange cliffs glinting in the bright sun. And in the very center of the lake was the head of a giant sculpture rising from the water about 50 feet high. The face on the head was female, a young humanoid woman carved of soft-hued roses and pinks, with dark eyes and detailed lashes, a straight nose, peach lips. Pale red flowers adorned her forehead like a summer garland. On top of her head draped a full-plumed crane, white with blue-feather accents. She wore it like a fancy hat. The crane’s head arched downward, the beak of dark yellow almost touching the woman’s forehead. The face gazed across the still water like the perpetual but frozen rising of a goddess. The sculpture looked air-brushed to make it stunningly life-like.

  Everywhere flowers bloomed, every shape, size and color, lilacking the air with their mingled scents. It was like being drunk, breathing that air. We were truly in a fairytale.

  At the forest edge, violets carpeted the pathways. The bended brown trunks of trees arched and framed the lake, the inner forest, the mauve-blue shore.

  They served us wine on the boat. We didn’t need it. The air was wine itself. But we drank it anyway.

  We had no words to say to each other as the little boat circled the statue, the crane-topped goddess, and headed back to our outlandish, Unseelie hotel.

  This…this was like feeding starving eyes that have never before seen color, nature, life.

  Lark’s eyes glinted gold in the fairy-light of Nod, watching me wipe my tears. Again. I’ve got to stop doing this. Every planetfall lately I start weeping like a baby.

  He was smiling, though. And Tiri was snapping holo after holo with her hand-screen…when she wasn’t offering to steer the boat.

  We ate like kings. Cheese stuffed steaks. Little fish-like things. Burning sweet cream and ices. And more wines of ruby and alabaster, our choice. I prefer the white even though the red looks lush, gaudy, more precious.

  The top floor of Beauty’s View, like the little box elevator boats, is made entirely of glass. After dinner the sky grew dark, yet clear. The stars popped on, failing to fling their warmth.

 
And then the thunderlights. We heard them first. A series of rumbles and tumbles of air. A drum. A rum pum. A flurry of staccato. Then they flashed. Crooked lines making tangles and puzzles, a rainbow of spirographs, a new design with each flash. All colors and shapes filled the skies. Colors I can’t name. Shapes I’ve never seen. Abstract but also strangely rhythmic. You can see holos, but they can’t convey the feeling of standing under them in a clear dome, looking and thinking yourself engulfed in some immense candy-world’s mouth.

  Lark said, “This planet belches unicorns and rainbows.”

  Tiri smacked him. “It’s gorgeous. Liyan thinks it’s gorgeous, right, Liyan? Stop making fun!”

  “If you go for that sort of thing,” he replied. But he was taken aback. I could tell. And he got all soft, blurry, framed in neon thunderlight as he embraced his wife.

  We stumbled to our suite drunk and in awe of the day, falling quickly into our respective beds, dreaming in fairy-vision for the rest of the night.

  Cobalt, I want to tell you I did wish many times that you could be with us. And I always think about how I will do justice to the scenes I see in my waves to you.

  And do not think you are at a disadvantage at understanding friendship. You are a good friend to me. And I value my friendship with you.

  If you misunderstand something I say, I always believe it is due to my lack of writing skill. This written language is different from the spoken. You cannot see nuances of body language or hear tones and inflections and shifts in the voice. And the eyes communicate so much, too. I want to see your eyes often when I read your waves. Too bad voice and image breaks up on far-distance waves. It’s foldspace that blocks us even after we come out of it. It makes me feel so faraway.

  Tomorrow I should learn my test results.

  Expect another wave soon.

  Your friend,

  Liyan

  *